


The Friar's Fabulous Dream Machine

by GloriaMundi



Category: Van Helsing (2004)
Genre: Dreams, Gift Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-06-27
Updated: 2004-06-27
Packaged: 2017-10-05 19:00:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/45044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GloriaMundi/pseuds/GloriaMundi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Van Helsing has nightmares: Carl has a Device.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Friar's Fabulous Dream Machine

Van Helsing was light-headed with sleeplessness, so that when Carl appeared before him he was unsure, for a moment, whether the friar was real or merely some phantom conjured by his own fatigue. He wanted to rub his eyes, or touch the other man, but that could so easily be misconstrued.

It didn't help that Carl was waving a handful of something at him. Something that glittered. Something that reminded van Helsing of _pleasant_ dreams, the kind that featured exotic dancing girls rather than --

He shuddered, trying to unremember fanged horrors and torn flesh. No wonder he'd woken drenched in sweat as the sky lightened before dawn.

"We have to do something about these nightmares," said Carl firmly, and it was such a precise echo of van Helsing's own thoughts that he simply gaped at the friar. "We can't have the Vatican's secret weapon crippled by a few nasty dreams, now can we?" said Carl reasonably. He brandished the glittering handful, and van Helsing could see that it was a sort of net -- he thought of dancing girls again -- made of copper and knotted with small crystals.

"Very nice," he said dryly. "What does it do?"

What it did, or at least _how_ it did it, was something that was apparently beyond Carl to explain, at least in any sense that van Helsing understood. It had something to do with a Doctor Mesmer, he grasped that much, and with some dusty tomes of Royal Society proceedings that Carl enthusiastically flung open. "See? The electrodes --"

"Please, Carl, stop!" van Helsing sneezed, and continued to sneeze as he spoke. "Just tell me ... what ... it does."

"With the aid of this device and a good dose of laudanum, we will be able to _see_ your dreams," said Carl triumphantly.

"Laudanum?" said van Helsing dubiously. "Isn't that --"

"Yes, yes, opium and good French brandy. Unless you'd prefer the opium on its own?" said Carl waspishly. "No? It is merely to relax your body and let your mind roam free."

"Supposing I don't _want_ my mind to roam free?"

"How else will we know the horrors that lurk within?" said Carl dramatically, though the effect was rather spoilt by a deafening explosion somewhere off to their right. "Just come this way, van Helsing. I promise you it's perfectly safe."

Van Helsing remembered the infernal device in which they'd found Doctor Frankenstein's creation, and he steeled himself for the worst: Carl, he had found, was remarkably brave when it came to what _others_ had to endure. Carl led him past all manner of strange machinery, some of it inhabited (or driven) by other friars: not for the first time, van Helsing wondered just how far this habit of obedience went. Did they all obey Carl unquestioningly? It was an unnerving thought.

They had ventured far beyond the limits of van Helsing's mental map: he was quite lost by the time that Carl stopped in front of a wooden door. The friar produced a jangling clump of keys from within his robes, and unlocked the door in three places. Van Helsing entered the room warily, looking around him. He wasn't sure what he expected to see.

But after all, it seemed, his ordeal would involve nothing worse than taking off his boots and his hat, lying on a sinfully-soft couch, and staring at his own reflection in a large mirror that hung on the wall at the end of the couch. Carl busied himself with clinking bottles, but the angle of the mirror meant that van Helsing could see only himself.

"Here," said the friar, offering him a glass of some dark liquid. "It's the best that I could find. Good brandy, too; the monks always keep the best for themselves."

Van Helsing raised an eyebrow, and Carl smiled. It was a nice smile, and it made van Helsing feel safer than he'd felt for a long time. He drank down the laudanum -- it _was_ very good brandy, and he could taste the opium only as a heavy, gluey underlay -- and looked expectantly at his companion.

"Now the oneiroscope," said Carl brightly.

Van Helsing gaped at him.

"It means 'dream viewer'," explained Carl, carefully spreading out the glittering copper net. "Sit up, please?"

Bemused, van Helsing did as he was told. The brandy -- the _laudanum_ \-- was running through his veins and making them glow. Carl was glowing too, and his hands, positioning the copper wires carefully on van Helsing's head, felt marvellously warm, pulsing with life. Van Helsing thought of feeling that sensation against his bare skin, rather than through his hair ... Where had that idea come from? He was afraid it would show in his face, and so he looked down, at the scars on the back of his hand. Amazing how he'd never noticed the intricacy of his own skin before.

"Now lie back -- carefully, carefully -- that's it." Carl moved to the back of the room, and van Helsing could hear mechanical noises. "You didn't sleep very well last night, did you? No, don't shake your head; just say yes or no."

"No," said van Helsing.

"Can you remember your dreams?" said Carl.

"No!"

"You need to remember --"

"I don't want to remember!"

"It's safe here," said Carl gently, and van Helsing could tell from his voice that he spoke the truth.

But there, in the mirror, there were clouds -- not clouds of smoke, but small, gilded clouds high in a deep blue sky, above desert hills. It should have been a beautiful scene, but it filled van Helsing with dread, because he knew that any moment

"Oh, my," said Carl.

\-- any moment, the demons would swoop down out of the clear air, seizing knights from their horses, sending the panicked horses themselves to run wildly through the infantry, as lethal as any winged monster. The dream was silent, but that made it worse: men and horses screaming without a sound, mouths gaping, throats corded with effort, and not even an echo anywhere except in van Helsing's mind. When the demons bled, their blood was saffron-coloured, and it burnt his skin

"The Second Crusade?" said Carl, rather diffidently. Van Helsing murmured something like 'yes'. He'd forgotten so much: that man next to him, carried out of the saddle by the weight of the demon he'd slain, was his friend Martin, with whom he'd

He made a sort of protesting sound, and shut his eyes against the far-off battle: and Carl laid his cool hand on van Helsing's brow for a moment. His touch pressed the copper netting into van Helsing's scalp, but it was a good sensation; a real one.

"The dream's been drawn out," said Carl softly. "Like the poison in a wound. You can let it go now."

Van Helsing thought of a silk scarf on a windy day, and the way that it felt alive as he raised it above his head and let it go. A signal? Surely a signal of sorts. He let the dream go but now, now there was something about that scarf, that red silk scarf, and the man he was signalling. The mirror showed a different place now: a town by a river, with corpses lying in the streets. There were creatures prowling among the buildings, and the way that they moved made them seem like puppets. There was a fresh grave, and a shovel.

"I had buried my friend," van Helsing murmured. "I could not fight them; too many "

The dream changed again: an open hillside, above a town -- the same town? -- and the flicker of red silk as the wind caught at the banner in his hand. Downhill, a man on horseback emerged from a pine-wood.

Carl had settled himself on a low stool beside the couch where van Helsing lay. Now he sat up, and for the first time he sounded surprised by the scenes in the mirror.

"Isn't that Dra--"

"No," said van Helsing.

"It looks like --"

He wanted this memory back, every detail of it, and Carl's questions stopped him from remembering the sound of Vlad's voice. "Not yet," van Helsing growled. "He's not Dracula yet."

Vlad looked young. Alive. Not as weary or as cruel as he'd been last year, in Transylvania. Van Helsing couldn't see his younger self's face, and he was glad that Carl couldn't, either: wouldn't want the friar to get the wrong idea. Or the right one.

The dream played out like the memory that it truly was, everything seen through the eyes of a medieval knight on a good (though tired) horse, on a hillside in Eastern Europe under a spring sky, with bluebells in the woods below them and leathery-skinned demons chasing screaming women through the narrow streets of the little town.

Carl couldn't see most of that; it wasn't in the dream. And yet van Helsing found himself curiously shy, because of what Carl _could_ see: the smile on Vlad's face that answered his own smile, the lift of an eyebrow, the way that his friend -- had they been friends already? -- leaned towards him in the saddle as they turned towards the castle.

Van Helsing wanted to close his eyes; more to the point, he wanted Carl to close _his_ eyes. But Carl was as fascinated by the scene playing out in the mirror as van Helsing himself, though van Helsing had some idea of what was coming.

Yes: there. The dream-scene melted seamlessly into another. This time van Helsing and Vlad were indoors, in a room with curved stone walls and narrow windows ablaze with sunset. They were arguing about something.

"What's he saying?"

Van Helsing did not reply. He was afraid that if he tried to speak, nonsense would come out. Or something worse than nonsense. He wished he'd never let Carl near him with this infernal machine. Was there no way to keep any of his secrets?

"Oh," breathed Carl, shifting on his stool as Vlad leaned in and

.... kissed van Helsing. He wanted to close his eyes. He wanted to be somewhere else. But Vlad was so beautiful, in the rich golden light, and his smile his eyes

Van Helsing's throat tightened, and he coughed. Carl, instantly solicitous, was pressing a cup into his hands. Van Helsing sipped carefully, but it was water, not laudanum.

"Just a dream," Carl said kindly. "The mind is a very strange place!"

He did not look away from the mirror.

Van Helsing made a random noise of agreement. He hoped that this particular dream would fade away soon: easier, by far, to watch slaughter and despair than to be forced to witness this sin. And yet, he'd woken aching and aroused, so many times, from this dream, which was _not_ just a dream: he didnt want to let it go.

He watched, with a sort of paralysed fascination, as the dream played out. He didn't dare look at Carl. It was embarrassing enough to be aroused by what he was seeing: far, far worse to let Carl see that, or to acknowledge the reason for his companion's ragged breath, and the way that he kept shifting on the stool.

At last -- and not a moment too soon for van Helsing's self-control -- the scene in the mirror faded; or perhaps it simply became too dark to see anything. He wondered whether he was blushing; wondered what Carl thought of it all. Decided that he'd rather not know.

And this new dream seemed safer. That, surely, was Anna Valerious, standing in her ridiculous boots in the main square of another little Transylvanian town. He could imagine -- could dream -- all manner of scenes involving Anna, and perhaps they would counterbalance the memories that his mind had already produced from the past.

But van Helsing felt a sense of foreboding. Oh, nothing as finely-tuned as the realisation, the remembrance, of what was about to happen, in the magical -- scientific -- mirror, with Vlad. But he reached up to rip the copper net from his head.

"Don't," said Carl softly, putting his hand on van Helsing's to stop him.

Van Helsing shivered at the warm touch. "I don't want to watch any more," he said thickly.

"You'll sleep more peacefully tonight," said Carl. "By drawing out the nightmares --"

"It wasn't a nightmare," said van Helsing before he could stop himself.

"What do you mean?"

Van Helsing did not answer: not because there was nothing to say, but because of what was unravelling in the mirror. Anna had disappeared, and it was just Carl now, smiling that oddly sharp smile at invisible van Helsing, and coming nearer, and oh God no.

Van Helsing thought he might have spoken aloud. He knew he had shut his eyes. He was absolutely sure that he was blushing now: either that, or the room was on fire. At least, he thought faintly, it's proof that the mirror shows things that _haven't_ happened, as well as those that _have_. Carl knows this didn't happen. Doesn't he?

But he could feel Carl's breath now, oddly cool against the flushed skin of his face.

"Is this a dream, Gabriel," said Carl carefully, "or a nightmare?"

He blew gently against van Helsing's neck, and that was so unexpected that van Helsing opened his eyes.

Carl was leaning over him, very close. Over his shoulder van Helsing could see the mirror, playing out this most personal of dreams in explicit detail. Van Helsing's eyes widened: whatever else might be said of his mind, it was certainly creative. But Carl was leaning over him, close enough to touch, and he was looking at van Helsing, and not at the mirror at all.

"A dream," said van Helsing thickly. "A good dream."

The couch, it turned out, was big enough for two, if they were willing to tangle themselves together. The copper net fell, or was tossed, to the floor: but the mirror carried on reflecting van Helsing's dreams.

-end-


End file.
